Franco-Americans Need To Tell their Own Stories

I was sitting in a bar chewing the fat with a friend. He noted that my book connected the story of the descendants of French-Canadians in the U.S. with the broader themes of the country’s history. He considered this a good approach because, said he, “no offense, but no one gives a sh*t about these French-Americans.”

No offense taken. He is right. I’m well aware that not only do few people care, but few people know anything about the Franco-Americans. And when I say Franco-Americans, I mean chiefly the descendants of the industrial workers and other manual laborers who came from Québec and the former Acadia to the industrial areas of New England between 1840 and 1930.

Their story has been largely forgotten even among the narratives where it should appear, e.g., in the story of the Cotton Kingdom; in the histories of industrialization; or in the annals of the Catholic Church in the U.S. Franco-Americans should have a chapter in each of these stories, but they are frequently overlooked or their contribution is minimized.

But the story was not forgotten because it’s unimportant; it’s considered unimportant because it’s been forgotten.

Why was it largely forgotten even by many of the descendants themselves? When I wrote an article to address that question called “Why Are Franco-Americans So Invisible?” a gentlemen responded online in the lovely, charitable manner characteristic of social media: “BECAUSE THEY NEVER WANTED THE SPOTLIGHT, YOU MORON !!” There’s some truth there. 

The Franco-Americans tend to dislike standing out or calling attention to themselves. As one of our number said to me, “we were taught that you don’t speak well of yourself, you let others speak well of you.” Since we didn’t speak of ourselves, few others spoke about us. Thus, the story was never woven into the national fabric.

But in its day, especially from 1880 through the early 20th c., French-Canadian immigration was a medium-sized deal. It was never the biggest issue facing the U.S., but it was in the national consciousness. Newspapers around the country, including the New York Times, covered it; national news magazines like Harper’s and The Nation published pieces; authors penned books in French and English; our ancestors were discussed in U.S. Senate hearings on labor; H.P. Lovecraft

vilified them, while writers like Jack Kerouac and Grace Metalious gave them literary life from an insider perspective. 

The French-Canadian textile operative was a known stereotype like the Chinese railroad laborer, the Slavic coal miner, the Jewish toiler in the garment industry, or the Mexican farm worker. But unlike these latter figures, the French-Canadian of the Northeast faded from the collective memory.

It seems to me that the Franco-Americans themselves, in their humility, never appreciated how important they were. Not wanting to call attention to themselves, they allowed the story to lapse. They shared few details with their children or grandchildren, who increasingly began to speak English and blend in with the majority, identifying with its values and history.

Since I’m not willing to let the story of my ancestors fade into obscurity, I think it's high time to reverse this process. And that means that it is up to Franco-Americans to tell their own stories. And where there are blogs, books of essays, conferences, presentations, plays, etc. about us, we should be leading the charge. We should at least be consulted and represented. 

When I’ve said this – and I have done so publicly and not without passion – some people leap to the conclusion that I mean that no one who is not Franco-American can or should tell the Franco-American stories. I mean nothing of the kind. 

We have been blessed to have a few non-Franco-Americans take an interest in us and tell our stories. But I do insist that these “outsiders” tell the story in an informed, responsible, and respectful way and I plan to hold them accountable. I ask that they at least talk to us, question us, and test their assumptions before telling us about our own historical experience. And, without mentioning names, I’ve seen this outsider perspective done both well and poorly.

People who come to the story from an outside perspective may offer a fresh and critical view. They are valuable. But the insider view is equally necessary. This insider view is important because it’s possible for an outsider to marshal all the facts but miss the truth. What one can make out of a set of facts does not always amount to the truth. Those who have the lived experience of growing up with Franco-Americans who worked in those mills hold this deeper truth, what I would call the emotional truth, of what it is to be Franco-American.

I grew up outside of the Franco-American enclaves and knew few facts about the history. But I knew all four of my grandparents, three of whom grew up in the mill towns and worked in those factories (the fourth grandparent grew up in Canada). They went to the bilingual schools, attended the French language church, and had French as a first language. 

When I researched and started marshalling facts about their history, I put ample flesh on the bones. But the structure, the spine of my narrative was there, literally in my DNA. And when I learned about the history, I could see how very Franco-American my family was, even while living in a suburb.  

When I’ve insisted that Franco-Americans should represent themselves, I’ve received a heated, negative reaction. There’s something threatening about this idea. Some people think I’m being divisive and exclusive. I’ve been de-platformed from speaking at a university because of this; I’ve been bawled out in the parking lot coming out of an event; I’ve been called “rude,” “hateful,” and “pathetic.”

I’m not complaining. I can take it. But I wonder about the heat of this rejection. And I also think that, were it any other ethnic, racial, or religious group in this country my notion that the insiders should lead and represent themselves in telling their own story would be entirely uncontroversial. Elsewhere, the principle “nothing about us, without us” is commonplace, as ordinary as a morning cup of coffee.

We must also acknowledge that there’s more than one Franco-American story. They are legion. There are the stories of men and of women. The stories of the workers and that of the miniscule Franco-American elite. The story of the typical industrial worker and the stories that don’t fit that mold. And there are the New England stories, and the Franco-American stories in other regions from New York state to the upper Midwest, to the Pacific Northwest. 

There are many stories, and some of them are bound to be contrasting and even contradictory. But it’s up to us to tell them. It’s up to us to redefine and represent this story that has faded from the national consciousness.

The alternatives are that this tale is mistold or that it vanishes forever. And I’m not willing to let my ancestors disappear without a fight.

I discussed these issues in an episode of the French-Canadian Legacy Podcast. I invite you to listen here.

There Are Many Names For Us

One of the earliest posts on this blog is called There Is No Name For Us. I argued there that it might be empowering to coin a term that would describe all of the various groups that descend from the 17th and 18th c. French colonists in the New World. I looked to the model of the terms Hispanic and Latino, which serve as umbrella terms for the various peoples of Latin American descent now living in the USA.

Rather than asserting that there is no name for us I might just as well have said that there are too many names for us: Québécois(e), Acadien(ne), Franco-American, Cadien, Canadien-français, etc. Vituperative arguments ensue over the names because some of them are ill-defined and people tend to become entrenched within their own understanding of any term they acquire as a self-description.

Let’s take an historical view of this name game.

In the first years of the 17th c. the French began to have permanent settlements in North America. As I understand it, the geographical term Nouvelle-France included all of the French colonies on the continent, which consisted roughly of three main territories.

• l’Acadie – Centered in today’s Canadian Maritimes, the people of Acadie came to be associated with what we now call Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, among other areas.
• le Canada – Included the St. Lawrence Valley to the Ottawa River, westward to the Great Lakes region which was sometimes called le Pays d’en Haut.
• la Louisiane – A vast territory in the modern American Midwest sweeping southward from the Ohio Valley to the Gulf of Mexico. This region was often divided into an Upper and a Lower Louisiana.

The boundaries between these regions were often disputed and the names were not always used precisely. Nonetheless, the original designations by which French North Americans were known correspond to these three regions: les Acadiens, les Canadiens, and les Louisianais.1

The term Louisianais does not include the Acadiens who were expelled from their homes in the 1750s and eventually found their way to Louisiana. This group, known today as Cadiens or Cajuns, ought to be distinguished from les Louisianais, that is from those who came to the southern colony directly from France.2

Two other groups with roots in the French Regime period include the Creoles of Louisiana and the Métis people, with their cultural center of gravity in Manitoba and the prairie provinces of today’s Canada. Any discussion of these groups, products of relations between European settlers and other peoples, touches the third rail of North American history: race. If I say no more about these two peoples here it is due to my own ignorance regarding a sensitive topic rather than to neglect or disinterest.

By 1803, what was once Nouvelle-France had been divided between Great Britain and the fledgling United States. British and American settlers became permanent residents of the former colonies of Nouvelle-France. However, the Francophone descendants in the former Acadie and in Canada retained their national designations.

For example, into my grandparents’ days, to these Francophones, a Canadien was someone who spoke French. The people of the British American possessions who spoke English they called les Anglais. This latter term applied not only to those with roots in the British Isles but also to Anglophones whose ancestry might well be German, Ukrainian, or Greek.

As the English speakers in the British North American possessions began to call themselves Canadians, the distinction between Francophones and Anglophones was sometimes emphasized by means of the hyphenated term Canadien-français and its English equivalent French-Canadian. This term was accepted until the middle of the 20th c. in Québec and is still heard in other parts of today’s Canada and in the USA.

Like their Canadien cousins, the Acadiens retained their name, their distinctiveness, and their regional character, i.e. an Acadienne was an Acadienne whether she came from New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, or the Magdalen Islands. The Cadiens of Louisiana also retained their name and separate identity.

Then came the great emigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from the former French colonies of le Canada and l’Acadie to the USA. What term ought to signify the children of these immigrants?

Around 1900 the term Franco-Américain came into use particularly among the large and cohesive group of Francophone immigrants in New England. This term was used to distinguish those born in the States, or permanently settled there, from those born in Québec or in the former Acadie.

Some within this group continue to use the older term French-Canadian, but that term is problematic for several reasons. First, it causes confusion. If I were to say to most Americans that I was French-Canadian they would assume that I was born in Canada. Not only was I not born there but neither were my parents, nor most of my grandparents. I am not any kind of Canadian in the modern sense of that term. I am an American and my identity-political label should reflect that.

Attestation to the term
Franco-American from the
Brunswick (Maine) Record
December 5, 1935.

Another reason the term French-Canadian is tricky in the New England context is that there are many Acadians there who would say that that term refers to people from Québec alone. Some Acadian descendants in New England reject the term Franco-American if it means that they’re lumped in with the latter. This view I have heard in particular from some inhabitants of the Saint John’s Valley in Maine who insist that they are not Franco-Americans but Acadians.

Many Franco-Americans, like myself, are the product of a mix of the peoples known as Canadien-français and Acadiens. Of my eight great grandparents, five were born in Québec, two were Acadians, and one was a Franco-Ontarien from the Great Lakes region. This is a textbook case, a sociological mean for New England Franco-Americans.

When I use the term Franco-American, I am referring to the descendants of this mix of North American Francophones who came to the Northeastern states circa 1870 to 1930. In my nomenclature, Franco-Americans, as such, are a phenomenon of the Northeastern States. I would make no objection if my cousins from the Great Lakes, Missouri, or Louisiana do not recognize the term and do not apply it to themselves.

The term encounters a rather silly obstacle, namely that it is associated with a brand of canned pasta products. The usage of the term as an ethnic designation predates the brand name but, since almost no one outside of New England has ever heard the term apart from the latter context, one encounters snickers at the mention of it.

Readers who have followed this name game play-by-play, as tangled as any mess of canned spaghetti, will note how complex it can be. I do not claim that my terminology or distinctions are definitive. I’m placing a stake in the ground with the expectation that others will move the markers as they see fit.

At the risk of trying my readers’ patience, in a future post I will say a few words about the designation that replaced the older terms Canadien and Canadien-français during that decade of change, the 1960s: Québécois.

1. The term “Louisianais” does not seem to have been used during the first French Regime in Louisiana but was in use not long after.

2. As usual, the history is messier than my survey claims since I am leaving out the Swiss and Germans who were integrated with les Louisianais very early on. Also, many of those who call themselves Cajun today are not descended from Acadiens at all.

There is No Name for Us

The descendants of the many distinct Latin American and Hispano-Caribbean groups in the USA have adopted a common name: Latino or Hispanic. Although the South Florida Cuban-Americans, the Mexican-Americans of California, and those of Puerto Rican origin in New York City (to name just a few of the peoples called Latino) come from quite different countries, and each maintains its cultural distinctiveness, Latinos have recognized that their interests were best served by recognizing their commonality in terms of language or heritage. By gathering all of these distinct groups under a single name, they have increased their cultural presence enormously.

There is no single name that embraces all of the French North Americans. We have many names: Québécois(e), Acadien(ne), Cajun, Franco-American, etc. Although each of these groups represents a distinct culture, with its own narratives and traditions, we share a common root, and yet that commonality is very little expressed or appreciated. Instead we tend to emphasize differences. In some instances some of these groups even regard one another with a measure of contempt, with one group, for example, looking down their noses at the brand of French spoken by another. This is unfortunate since we are such a fragile plant. It’s as if we’re on the last lifeboat off of the Titanic and we’re bickering over who has the nicer shoes!

Among the Franco-Americans of New England, descendents of a late 19^th-early 20^th c. migration from French-speaking Canada, there was a partial merger of two of these distinct groups. Some of the mill towns in New England attracted emigration from among both the Québécois and the Acadians (French speakers from the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada). In some places the two communities went to the same churches and schools, lived in the same neighborhoods, and worked in the same mills and factories.

As French-speaking Catholics in a foreign land, they recognized that they had much more in common with each other than they had with the dominant culture. Their Yankee neighbors would not have understood the differences between the two groups and labeled them both, correctly or not, as “French-Canadian.” In some cases they intermarried with one another, creating a hybrid of the two cultures. 

My Grandparents' Wedding 1923:
Son of Québécois Marries Acadienne

Three of my grandparents had roots in various regions of Québec, while my maternal grandmother was an acadienne from Prince Edward Island. I’ve informed myself about the history of both groups and claim a heritage that is both Québécois and Acadien and elements of both cultures were present in the foods and folkways of my family.

It should be emphasized that these mixes happened in a minority of cases nonetheless, the hybrid called “Franco-American” has features of both cultures. In fact, one of my great-grandfathers was a Franco-Ontarien, adding yet another flavor to the mix. Franco-Americans in New England also came from all parts of Québec, representing a mix of regions that our Québécois cousins might regard as distinct.

I suggest that French North Americans at least consider following the example of our Latino friends and christen ourselves with a name that applies to all of us. This is not to lose the pride in being Cajun, Franco-American, or Québécois. Cuban- or Mexican-Americans have certainly not lost any of their flavor in regarding each other as fellow Latinos. It seems clear to me that our future lies more in emphasizing our commonality and our unity rather than our divisions.

I doubt my suggestion will be embraced.